Mini-Grand 5111 [Round 3: Menagerie]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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The bewildered inhabitants of the tavern Rannus had arrived in, stood at the doorway and watched the crystalline figure as he chanted ominously, as he drew complex runes in the air and fashioned some kind of charm out of a cobblestone he prised up from the ground. His full attention was focused upon the flaming wreckage of the plane, and how to stop it from crashing down into the town, killing yet more innocent people. Even with the low level of mana that pervaded this world, the best he could do was slow the plane's descent, and though this had been accomplished it was far from problem solved.

While part of his mind was dilligently working to find a solution to this problem, another, more vocal part was cursing himself for his lack of foresight in bringing the plane through in the first place. It seemed extremely unlikely that anybody was still alive in the slow-falling inferno, an assumption that was confirmed with a detection of life ritual, all he had managed to do was endanger the lives of people who were otherwise safe. Though, a third part of his mind argued, perhaps he wasn't as responsible for this disaster as those who had designed a mechanical building that flew through the air in the first place. Such a vehicle was doomed to failure from the moment of its conception. The Archmage was pretty sure that in the world from which such a deathtrap had originated, this kind of thing probably happened all the time, and his action, though yes it had worsened the situation, was far from atypical. He would simply destroy the plane, obliterate it so thoroughly as to crush it's component parts into dust. After that he would see about collecting the two remaining competitors in this foul competition and with them returning them to their homeworlds. On the way he would pay a visit to Pan Asia Airways and have a serious word with them about their flawed concept.

Throughout this mental diatribe the archmage had failed to notice the arrival of the preternatural fog that now encloaked the town. He glanced around at the tavern to find that the people therein had closed and locked the doors, and bolted the windows. This was of no consequence, he would not need the cooperation of the townsfolk in this particular resolution to the plane problem. On the other hand this sudden change in the weather was frustrating in its untimeliness, but it was a problem easily solved. Most problems were, with just the right application of mana. He began to chant as he strode in the direction of the flaming wreckage (the brightness of the flames were just about visible through the eerie cloak of fog), and as he did so gusts of wind blew through the town. Around Rannus the fog was pushed away, but the moment that he ceased his incantations and the gusts subsided, the fog began to creep back, faster than one would expect such a thing to occur.

Rannus suddenly realized something that should have occurred to him before. In his haste to rescue the doomed aircraft he had not even considered the implications of finding mana in this world. Mana was the lifeblood of the supernatural. It should have been obvious from the get-go that if a world contained it, there would be some magician somewhere who had found a way to harness it, or creatures borne from it. Mana did not exist without those who would use or abuse it.

Rannu couldn't help but observe as it crept back over him that this fog felt like one of those things.

Rannus wished he had used the mana he found more sparingly.